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Despite widespread opposition from a number of legislators, activist groups, and the public, The Keystone XL pipeline has one unlikely ally—the Asthma Society of Canada—that has spoken out in support of pumping crude tar sands oil down to refineries near the Gulf of Mexico.

With the United States and Iran reaching a nuclear deal this month, some have voiced concerns about whether the deal really has the ability to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. In The National Interest, TCF's Lauren Sukin and Selim Can Sazak write that even if Iran were to obtain a nuclear weapon, there would be little need to worry:

Even today, Iran is already overstretched in terms of both funding and military resources—it has no incentive to provoke yet another fight. No matter the strategic relevance of its current wars in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen, Iran cannot indefinitely sustain its adventures abroad. And, to put it mildly, none of its current fights will be easy wins to start with. In sum, Iran is simply outgunned, outspent, outflanked, and overstretched. Deal or no deal, nuclear weapons or none, there are only two outcomes: either Iran makes the smart choice, and avoids conflict, or it loses to the Saudis and their American allies.

Following last week's agreement on a nuclear deal with Iran, some members of Congress have expressed frustration with the United Nations Security Council for passing a resolution supporting the deal. In the Huffington Post, TCF fellow Stephen Schlesinger argues that this ignores the role the Security Council has played in the past—for instance, when it approved the United States' plans for the first Gulf War:

If it is alright for a Republican leader to send legislation on critical global matters to Congress following a UN edict and get approval, why is it not equally fine for a Democratic president to do so? In both cases, the determination concerned matters of war and peace, though, it must be said, in the Iranian case, it was to avoid war while in the Kuwait case it was to go to war—a huge difference.

The recent nuclear deal with Iran is one of Barack Obama's signature foreign policy achievements. In World Politics Review, TCF fellow Michael Cohen writes that it is one of many examples of the more hands-off approach the U.S. has taken with the Middle East during Obama's term.

The days of U.S. immersion in the problems of the Middle East have surely reached an end point. As Marc Lynch writes in an upcoming article for Foreign Affairs, “Obama came to office with a conviction that reducing the United States’ massive military and political investment in the Middle East was a vital national security interest in its own right.”

And over the past six years, with plenty of fits and starts and some detours along the way, Obama has by and large successfully executed that strategy. The Iran deal is merely the coup de grace, and it lays the groundwork for a shift to Asia that goes beyond rhetoric.

The recent nuclear agreement between Iran and the United States marks the end of an era in U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. In Foreign Affairs, TCF fellow Thanassis Cambanis argues for a shift in the American approach that prioritizes focusing on one Middle Eastern country at a time to a more ad-hoc strategy focusing on specfiic issues:

After years of myopic focus on Iran’s nuclear program, the United States will have to take an unsentimental and cleareyed inventory of its dysfunctional allies. It can only expect so much from Saudi Arabia, Israel, Egypt, and Turkey — but with these sorts of friends, it behooves Washington to lower its expectations and take a more transactional approach to enlisting cooperation, whenever possible, on a single issue or subsets of issues. A disappointed Saudi Arabia, for instance, might play ball with the United States on Syria — even as it opposes Washington’s policy in Iraq.

Foreign Policy

In the first years of the new century, an assertive foreign policy took a toll on the cultivated role of the U.S. as a responsible global leader. The Century Foundation's work in this area provides perspective on the international difficulties the U.S. is facing today, while providing policy recommendations to promote the nation's security interests. Our research and analysis focuses on effectively responding to challenges in the Middle East and Pakistan, as well as responding to international crime.